ABSOLUTE DOMINION (Lexi Alexander 2025)

[Chris Knipp]

DÉSIRÉ MIA IN ABSOLUTE DOMINION

LEXI ALEXANDER: ABSOLUTE DOMINION (2025)

TRAILER

Abs dom

This tale of a contest to end a future state of global religous conflict draws on Star Wars and perhaps The Hunger Games and has some nice ideas and a cool new young star. With a director who is part Palestinian, we get some conversation in Arabic and more awareness of other languages and cultures than usual for an American film, and that's a good thing. Isn't it nice also to think world conflict might be resolved with a single hand-to-hand combat encounter? This is billed as "a radical new form of diplomacy."

It's the future and many of the world's major cities have been trashed in what has become a global holy war, multiple religions fighting for dominance. A jokey, F-word-talking Patton Oswalt character called Fix Huntley, talking on a cheap camera in a van somehow gets worldwide attention when he proposes a martial arts competition, in which the winner's religion will become the dominant one, to resolve this chaos. A competition Fix Huntley proposes, known as The Battle of Absolute Dominion, will be held and the winner's religion will be the dominant one.

Sagan Bruno (newcomer Désiré Mia) emerges as the unknown top dog in the tournament. If he indeed wins, his religion will be the dominant one. He is 6'3", 190 lbs., has a reach of 80", fights "transvait" style, and easily wins his 12 prelims for qualifiers who are unranked, each of which we rapidly glimpse. He comes from IHS, the Institute of Humanism and Science, so, not a religion at all.

Star Désiré Mia is a tall, loose-limbed fashion model with a German mother and an Ivorian father. He is a 25-year-old social media creator with 220,000 Instagram followers whose parents wish he had finished school. What works about him is that, apart from the smooth, lithe way he fights, with those looks it makes sense when it emerges that Sagan was genetically engineered from donors with this kind of competition in mind. Sagan reportedy has an IQ of 180 and speaks eight languages. He doesn't have to write down phone numbers he needs to remember, just glance at them. His fighting style is balletic: he seems more like a dancer than pugilist and all the "pro" fighters who are matched with him look clunky by comparison, like they'e trying too hard. There is a calm, pleasant air about him that is appealing, perhaps a little otherworldly.

As the movie gets talkier, one of the genetic donors comes in, Sagan's scientist "mother" Satara (Oluniké Adeliyi), a Rhodes Scholar and former world champion gymnast who's also a srhink. This emerges in a chat between the tall, bearded coach and the short female security specialist assigned to Sagan. The father is there too and the picture develops these relationships so that despite being genetically modified, Sagan is loving and loved, like anybody else. The screenplay delves interestingly into a subplot about maintaining security for Sagan in this violent, hostile world, which becomes much riskier after he emerges as a potential winner.

Beside the jokey Patton Oswalt character, the frontal figure for the world's communication is also comedic, a very campy one with heavy eye makeup, a dark five-o'clock-shadow beard, pink hair, a succession of wild outfits, and talk that is in the "Miss Thing" style.

They hash over the fact that Sagan's toughest opponent so far in the Shalom Stadium prelims, a Dari (perhaps meaning Zoroastrian) person, wants to fight to the death even when pinned, and Sagan won't kill him. He eventually "taps out," and competition officials want to figure out by studying tapes how Sagan accomplished this.

Another opponent is a giant Sumo type Sagan beats by climbing around on him like an acrobat. He concludes: "when your opponent is a bull, be a muleta. If he is a muleta, be a bull. Just don't be a matador." Certainly an original metaphor.

When in the midst of finally fighting his first official top-50 opponent, Sagan appears to produce a weapon, and proceedings are halted. It's a misunderstanding, which is frequent with Sagan because his special skills are so unexpected. Eventuallly he becomes justified and recognized and goes on to win a decisive victory when badly injured. But the drama of this is lessened because he doesn't seem to feel the pain. The other combatants have by now begun to see him as a "prophet" because everyone now knows that he hears God talking to him, a development that changes his status as the "athiest" fighter, though this interesting development isn't fully resolved.

This is a different, intelligent kind of martial arts picture even if it fall short of top ranking in both the intellectual and the martial arts categories and doesn't quite achieve the powerful and suspenseful finale the genre demands. Deesiré Mia is an interesting new entry into the martial arts movie roster. At one point it appears that he speaks fluent Portuguese. On an Instagram self-interview he says he has no hidden talents but in this movie he already reveals abilities that are unusual, so that statement seems over-modest.

Other important cast members, somewhat hard to pin to character names, are Alex Winter (Bill and Ted Face the Music), Julie Ann Emery (Preacher), June Carryl (Helstrom), Oluniké Adeliyi (The Expanse), Regan Gomez (Queen Sugar) and Andy Allo (Upload). Also included are Andy Allo, Mario D’Leon, Alex Winter, Junes Zahdi, Alok Vaid-Menon, and John Siciliano. Philip Tan, who’s had a long stunt career that includes work in Inception and Minority Report, oversaw fight choreography, which is not too shabby. According to a Las Vegas Review Journal piece from earlier this month, as a setting the filmmakers used a closed casino called Terrible’s in a small town in Nevada, and a lot of the tournament action appears to be at a hotel. The film makes good use of its very minimal production design with music, sound effects, and a lively cast. People of color are well represented.

During post-production Netflix and Blumhouse departed from the project (Variety reported), but it was picked up for US and internatonal distribution by Giant Pictures and is available online in the US now.

Director and writer Lexi Alexander is a German-Palestinian filmmaker and martial artist who is known for her work on films such as Johnny Flynton (2002), Green Street Hooligans (2005), Punisher: War Zone (2008) and Lifted (2010).

Absolute Dominion, 100 mins., opens in theaters and online starting May 9, 2025.